Tag: tired

I am grateful because today, despite being tired, uninspired, flat, and with a MASSIVE cbf attitude when I got home from work, I still somehow summoned up the energy to make these:

Spinach and fetta pastries. Can I just say, soooo lucky I didn’t read the recipe properly, or else I never would have made it – had I known I actually had to roll the pastry out.

Like, sigh. Who has time to ‘roll’ these days?

So I did, barely. And though they were kinda falling apart when I put them together, the save function occurred when I turned them upside down to keep the fold on the bottom – and they turned out great.

It all came about when I came across a recipe for using up spinach, and I had a fair bit of spinach that needed using up in the fridge. I’ve been really trying to cook according to what I have, and waste not, want not as I go along. It is better for the environment, and better for your wallet too.

I always hold back when I need to use pastry, whether store-bought, frozen, whatever… let alone the insane terrifying thought of making pastry myself.

But I am aware of my pastry fear, and I am going to try and make more things that use this my most scary ingredient, and shock horror – I might even make a pie, from scratch.

Dum da dum dum.

I know, right? Un-bloody-believable. Watch this space.

But for now, this pastry rocks. It turned out so great, despite literally smacking it together… life is so much better when things work with you.

People all over the schooling/working world LOVE Saturdays. It is perhaps one of the most celebrated days of the week.

And yet for me, this glass half-full and gratitude gal, I couldn’t wait for it to be over.

And now that it is, I am now, finally grateful.

I worked. It was one of thosedays. And then stomach cramps and spasms thrown on top of it definitely didn’t help. But for me, my weekend begins sometime tomorrow, and after a good long sleep in, I know I will feel better.

Sometimes we just need to go to bed, and start again. So I am grateful for that. The end today, means a new beginning tomorrow…

I was so tired as I struggled to fight the fog, reading baby girl a book in the dark of her room, against her dim Skye lamp.

But soon it was done. She wanted some face tapping, which I promptly followed with, and then she was going to do it on me, so I closed my eyes and settled in for some random and non-parallel taps from her gentle fingers all over my face.

She ended by kissing me on the forehead, just as I always do for her.

I quickly tucked her in, getting comfortable sitting on the toy box beside her as I did every night, waiting for her to fall asleep. Then –

*lip-smacking sounds!*

She wanted another kiss. I leaned in quickly – do not fight the requests, it only delays everything that much more – and we gave each other kisses. To which she then said,

“Mama best friend.”

Awww.

“You’re my best friend too,” I whispered to her giving her another kiss.

“Yeah best friend, in whole world!”

Awww. I mean, that there. I’m done.

Tick tick tick. I’ll remember that moment, these memories, and this age, forever and ever and ever.

I was feeling lowly and flat at times today, and not because I was back at work. It was more my own bodily cycles, seasonal symptoms, as well as the fact that I slept 5 hours last night, with my body screaming “why aren’t I sleeping ’til 9?!” when the alarm got me up at 5am.

Hubbie went to Kmart with baby girl and got her this:

(Who are we kidding, he got himself that).

He set it up for her and they went wild slam-dunking all over the place. Slam-dunking over the door, slam-dunking over a shelf, even slam-dunking over a chair so that it was more ‘slam-dunk accessible’ to baby girl.

I stood there in the kitchen washing the after-dinner dishes, smiling at them as they ran amuck. No one has ever been so happy to get air balls as baby girl was.

And although they say it’s not ideal to search outwards for your own fulfilment of happiness, I have to say on this day, I absorbed some of their youthful exuberance and playfulness, turning my grey day into a much sunnier one.

That’s what loved ones are for, right? Sometimes you just need a helping hand.

I’ve had times today where I’ve been fed up and frustrated… both with life and baby girl.

But by the same token, I’ve had proud Motherly Moments.

Like for example, when baby girl needed a snack, and after giving it to her she said happily “Thank you Mama.”

Or how when I asked if she wanted any fish with her dinner, instead of cracking it and complaining, she gave a sweet “no thanks,” tilted her head and squinted her eyes in a cheeky ‘you-know-you-love-me’ fashion.

Or the way she asked for more capsicum strips during dinner. She didn’t want a bar of them yesterday, and yet today, it’s her favourite food.

Or when I was at her level, helping her in the toilet, and she gave me repeated kisses on my forehead, followed by eskimo kisses, a lean in to me and “Awww, Mama.”

(Heart-grabbing).

Like I said, proud moments. One proud Mama. She is a stubborn girl, and has real determination and personality about her, but she is a beautiful and kind soul, with such genuine goodwill and heart, that it warms our soul every day.

It was always going to be a grateful day when we went to see Disney’s Frozen On Ice. None more so grateful that baby girl herself.

She dressed up in her finest character-gear – the ‘Anna’ costume (which I secretly revelled in because she was going against the grain of every other girl dressing as Elsa);

we jumped on a beachside train and had a fun trip into the city alongside other little people dressed as Frozen characters (baby girl became best friends instantly with a girl her age dressed as Elsa);

and after the show, took a token piece of heavily-overpriced Frozen merchandise home, because you know, Disney marketing.

Isn’t baby girl the one grateful for all this? Why would I even mention these things when all of the above points would have made HER excited and happy?

It’s because what makes her happy, makes us happy too.Thrilled. It was all done for her, but when you do something for someone out of love, the love just multiplies, until you too, are obsessively in love with Anna and Kristoff, and do a Lleyton-style fist pump when Anna smashes one across Hans’ face.

(Yes).

Such a beautiful day for baby girl, that made us smile, bonded us more as a family, and has left us absolutely pooped TO NO END.

“Ugh,” I groaned. I was overit. Baby girl was going for yet another book.

Any other night and I would have just bared it. Tonight however, I was feeling ‘it’ again. Under the weather. Tired. Weak. Sore throat. The last few weeks this is how I’ve been… how we’ve all been. The cold comes, the cold goes.

Great, I thought. This Winter cold is ‘up’ again.

She came back to her bed with a second book, while I closed my eyes and willed myself to remain calm.

The sooner I read it, the sooner it’ll be over, and then I’ll be able to go to sleep.

I started reading an old faithful: In The Night Garden.

“The night is black and the stars are bright,

and the sea is dark and deep,

and someone I know is safe and snug

and drifting off to sleep…”

Baby girl was grabbing at my free hand, and appeared to be doing something to it… tickling it? Was she drawing circles in it the way I used to do to her hand, during this part of the story?

It occurred to me as she straightened my fingers. “Do you want to hold hands?” I closed mine around hers.

“Yeah.”

Awww. Immediately, all the frustration I’d been feeling melted away. She wanted to hold hands and have me read to her? This girl is the cheekiest and smartest and most challenging of monkeys at times, but when she pulls things like this, my heart can barely cope with the onslaught of love. Simultaneous guilt for wanting to go and sleep, versus enormous gratitude for this moment emerged.